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Mr. Kelley was running numbers.

We finished stripping down number one and broke out the hoses to wash it all down before breaking out fresh matrix. We started laying down cleaned frames, Francis and I made them up, Diane sprayed them with new bacteria, and Brill hung them before he stopped running numbers.

“It’s gonna get stuffy in here, but it might work. We need to increase flow or the CO2 will pool in the lower parts of the fore and aft sections.”

Brill said, “Run a long exhaust duct from the life boat deck to the after section. Pull everybody you can out of there. Blow the air from the boat deck into the after section and let the pressure differentials bring the fresh air back. You can set up a little bit of circulation and keep the highest levels of CO2 running across the surface.”

He added that to his calculations as we finished with number one. The problem was not in getting them rebuilt, it was the time it would take for the algae to bloom and begin scrubbing. We were shaving off a few valuable minutes by working quickly, but we were short by too many to make much difference if we couldn’t manage to control the overall CO2 levels.

“Better,” he announced. “Might be enough.” He pulled out his comm, headed for the hatch, and was lining up people and equipment before he left the section.

We just kept building frames. Diane latched the lid back down on number one and I looked at the chrono, 22:00. If I were still alive at 09:00, we’d probably make it.

We started on number four and nobody talked. We just worked.

By 23:30 we had all the scrubbers rebuilt, and settled down to check the numbers. CO2 was still climbing, but the engineering crew was still rigging the duct work. Some of the deck gang had been put to work spreading the calcium hydroxide on the deck along the spine. They were shooting for two, five-centimeter-deep strips along either side of the spine with about a half meter open area in the middle to walk on. It would take almost all the powder we had to cover that much space but it gave us a large surface area to stream the CO2 laden air across.

By 02:00 the CO2 was almost at alarm critical levels and the crew had started up the blowers to push the heavy air all the way down the spine as the pressure differential between the bow and stern sections built up, the air they were pumping aft began working forward through the spine and across the absorbent powder.

By 04:00 the CO2 levels had stopped rising but even just moving around was difficult. Everybody was yawning. Of course, that might have had something to do with everybody being exhausted too. The air felt even heavier than normal in environmental.

By 05:00 the CO2 levels were rising again. The engineering crew investigated and found that the powder had formed a crust preventing additional absorption where the calcium hydroxide had reached its capacity. We all went out with brooms and broke the crust to expose the powder underneath to the air. It was hard to move and the brooms became heavy.

By 08:00 the CO2 levels were falling again. The scrubbers were coming online a bit faster than we had expected. It was still hard to breathe and I was getting a headache, but I began to see smiles.

By 09:00 we knew we had it beaten. Two of the four scrubbers were stripping out CO2 at maximum capacity, the third was running at about fifty percent and the last was kicking in about twenty percent.

At 09:30 the overheads piped and the captain’s voice came over the speakers. “This is the captain speaking. Full power should be restored within the hour. The CO2 and O2 levels are getting back to normal range. The sail generators should be back online this afternoon. We’ll be a couple of days late, but we’ll arrive thanks to your hard work, dedication, and ingenuity. You make me proud. That is all.”

After a few moments, the announcer came back on with, “All hands secure from General Quarters. Secure from General Quarters. Set normal underway operations. First section has the watch.”

I clambered up off the deck where I’d been sprawled and relieved Francis who was the last person to assume the watch before General Quarters. We all chuckled when he said, “Mr. Wang, ops are finally normal. We probably had some scheduled maintenance but we didn’t do it. You may relieve the watch.”

“I relieve you, Mr. Gartner,” I said. “I have the watch.”

Betrus System
2352-June-05

The captain was as good as her word and power came up within a few ticks of her announcement. Brill sat with me to keep me company, and awake, for the remaining half of my watch. We even managed to replace the three toasted environmental sensors I had found up on the port bow. The
Lois
had taken a hit but she was still with us.

Diane came back after a couple of hours of sleep, a shower, and some food. Cookie set up a serving line with Pip and Sarah. They made omelets for those who wanted them and sandwiches for those who did not. It had been a long night for everybody and without full power, Cookie had to scramble to feed us. He did well with what he had.

Diane relieved me and tried to shoo away Brill but she protested. I didn’t stay around for the thrilling conclusion of their discussion and trundled off to my bunk. It seemed as though I had just hit the pillow when the watch stander woke me to relieve the watch again. I grabbed a quick shower, fresh clothes, coffee, and headed back to environmental.

I found Diane wide awake with a funny smile on her face and I wondered what that was all about until I saw Brill sacked out on the deck. We had a quiet discussion and decided we should wake her and send her off to bed. This time when Diane suggested she might be more comfortable in her bunk, she went. Besides, I told her, it sets a terrible example for the help. She laughed at that and patted me on the shoulder before staggering out of the section. I relieved Diane and settled down to see what maintenance had backed up on us. There wasn’t much, but it kept me awake. The VSI was an interesting experience, walking through the crusted calcium hydroxide was an eerie reminder and I wondered how we were going to get rid of it.

When Francis came to relieve me for the mid-watch, the section was almost back to normal. I gave him the full list of maintenance I had done along with the shorter list of things that needed doing that I had not had time for. He relieved me and I managed to get all the way up into my bunk before falling asleep. I didn’t manage to get out of my clothes or anything like that, but I wasn’t complaining.

I thought I was tired enough to sleep the twenty-four hours until I had to go back on watch, but I didn’t even make it to lunch time. I might have except for a treacherous bladder that insisted on being drained or it would do something juvenile and unpleasant. As a result, I got up around 10:30 and took care of business. Surprising how alive you can feel with a shower, a fresh shipsuit, and enough air to breathe.

It was too early for lunch and too late for breakfast, but I went to the galley anyway. I could at least get a cup of coffee and figured I could probably cadge something food-like from the watch cooler even if I couldn’t get Cookie to feed me. The thought made me grin. I couldn’t imagine Cookie not feeding anybody who showed up hungry.

When I got to the mess deck, I found a tired looking Mr. von Ickles waiting. He smiled when he saw me walk in but waited until I got coffee and snagged a pastry before calling me over. “Are you recovering?” he asked with a smile.

“Yes, sar. Thanks for asking. Been a busy couple of days, but I’m feeling almost as human as normal.”

“We need to do an incident report for the insurance company to validate that we did everything possible to mitigate damages. Do you have a few ticks to answer some questions while it’s fresh in your mind?”

“I don’t know how fresh it is. After all the CO2, I’m not sure I remember my name, but I’ll give it a go.”

He beckoned me out of the mess deck and led the way to the ship’s office. Mr. Maxwell and the captain were both there as well.

The captain smiled and said, “Thanks for taking the time to talk to us, Mr. Wang. It’s a pain, but we have to do this or the insurance company quibbles over every million they have to pay out.”

I thought that was a joke so I chuckled politely in case it was, and briefly in case it wasn’t. “No problem, Captain. I’m off till midnight.” That was a joke, but nobody laughed. I sipped my coffee and waited for instructions.

The captain nodded to Mr. Maxwell who started a recorder and listed off the people in the room, the date, and the time. Then we all had to go around the room and state our own names. After that, it got a little more interesting.

The captain asked most of the questions, and I noticed that Mr. Maxwell and Mr. von Ickles did something like keeping score, but I couldn’t tell what was making points.

“Mr. Wang, please tell us what happened starting at just after 19:00 on June 4, 2352 . What did you observe? What did you do? Only state those things you have direct knowledge of and not anything you heard from others please.”

She stopped me when I got to the part about turning on my tablet even though I knew the network was out. “Why did you do that, Mr. Wang?”

“So I could see what was going on, Captain. The screen was blank but it gave off enough light that I could see around me a bit.”

“What did you see, Mr. Wang?” she asked.

“Nobody else was in the passageway at the time, Captain. When the power was restored, I fell to the deck.”

“Were you injured, Mr. Wang.”

“No, Captain. I was a bit stunned but that’s all.”

“Please go on, Mr. Wang.”

When I got to the part about jamming the snout of the sniffer in the main air intake, we stopped again.

“Why did you do that, Mr. Wang?”

“Well, Brill sent Diane and I out to check for gasses in environmental so we were sure we weren’t pumping anything problematic out into the ship and then she asked one of us to see if anything was coming into the section. I stuck the nose of my sniffer into the intake manifold and it was clear, but since we didn’t know what was going on in the rest of the ship, I figured we better keep an eye on it. I couldn’t very well stand there with it, so I taped it down, cranked up the audio alarm and left it. Without other sensor capabilities, it was the best I could do.”

“Very logical, Mr. Wang,” the captain said.

“Thank you, Captain.”

“Please continue, Mr. Wang,” she said again and I began to hope I was not going to miss lunch.

We got to the part where I went onto the bridge with the portable and she made me pause to describe the machine with brand name and full specifications. I was afraid she was going to ask for the serial number, which I didn’t know, but she let me jump ahead to the part where Mr. von Ickles had me boot it up.

“What did you do when he gave you the program cube,” she asked.

“I mounted it and began looking at the code. There was a problem with the scripts that needed some adjustments so they would run on my machine and I fixed them. I missed one so the initial load failed, but I saw where it croaked and I got it on the second try.”

“And are you a computer expert, Mr. Wang?”

“No, Captain. I used to play around with them a lot back in school but I am particularly familiar with my mother’s machine, sar.”

“Why is that, Mr. Wang?” she asked.

“Whenever she would have trouble with it, I had to fix it for her. I also had performed a few upgrades. When she died I stripped her stuff off to backup cubes and reloaded it fresh.” I was proud of myself for not choking there.

“Yet, in spite of not being an expert, you spotted a problem with the ShipNet code and fixed it in less than ten ticks?”

“Yes, sar. But it took two tries, and there really wasn’t that much to fix.” I wanted to be honest.

“Please go on, Mr. Wang.”

We continued in this vein for some time. We would jump ahead and stop periodically for additional details. They were particularly interested that I thought environmental smelled bad and what the problem turned out to be. We finally got through the part of using the spine as a giant cartridge filter and using the brooms to break up the crust when the CO2 level started rising.

“Why brooms, Mr. Wang?” she asked.

“Because we had them, Captain. We needed something that was wide enough to punch a good hole without scattering the powder everywhere. The bristles on a broom worked really well, and we had plenty of them handy.”

Then I had to go on about replacing the sensor packs and the scheduled maintenance and was just about up to the point where I had to wake up to pee before they finally ran out of questions. Frankly, I was getting a little annoyed because I knew Cookie was already serving lunch.

Finally, Mr. Maxwell said, “Thank you, Mr. Wang.” He shut off the recorder.

The captain said, “Thank you for your time, Mr. Wang. Dismissed.”

As I was leaving, Mr. von Ickles said, “Oh, Mr. Wang?”

I stopped and hoped it wasn’t going to be another question. “Yes, sar?”

“We lived,” he said, and then winked.

I smiled. “Yes, sar, we did.”

They let me leave then and as I was heading back to the mess deck I pulled up my personnel jacket on the tablet. Sure enough there I found a Specialist Two (Systems) rating dated 2352-June-04 and, oddly, it was endorsed by the captain, Mr. Maxwell, Mr. Kelley, and Mr. von Ickles. That was the strangest addition to my ratings collection.